OLD DUTCH GLASS
Glassware of the seventeenth and eighteenth century made in the Lowlands, whether at Liège or Amsterdam, is known over here as “old Dutch.” Collectors will do wisely to study this ware, whether for the purpose of rejecting or acquiring it. Most collectors of English and Irish glass reject it at once; they rightly say that when thin it is too light-weight, bubbly, flashy, flat and short of ring, and when thick too smeary of tint and too clumsy to be first class; and often the engraving is poor and ugly. Indeed, there is something unfinished and unworkmanlike about it, compared with the craftsmanship put into English and Irish old glass; just as there is about Dutch-made furniture of William and Mary and Queen Anne date, compared with English-made furniture of the Chippendale period and style. There is something unsatisfactory in the look, shape, and proportions; it seems to lack completeness and fitness.
In the stemmed glasses, however, the Dutch air spirals are excellently done—except where they join the foot of the glass, sometimes; and the cotton-white spirals are hardly inferior to the English except in the greyness of the colour. For this reason, and also because the number of collectors of old glass increases, Dutch wine glasses on spiral stems go up in price at London auctions nowadays, and a rose glass or other pretty, well-engraved piece of Flemish or Dutch origin may be worth acquiring: there are collectors here of the Holland ware already, and there will be more as English and Irish ware of the kind becomes more difficult to find and expensive to buy. A spirit bottle, decanter, goblet, or other piece of Dutch glass that is engraved with armorials or dates, or names or legends, is not to be disdained, therefore; nor is any unusual piece that is quaintly quirked, fluted, purfled, and bossed.